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Search engine optimization tends to often come as a surprisingly big investment to small to medium-size companies. There’s really no way around spending time, resources and money to build your website up in search rankings, but it is achievable to gain a significant return on investment.

Mastering SEO ROI is as big of a challenge as brand development or social media growth hacking. Despite the best efforts to reign in a pointed, niche audience, boosted search rankings will inevitably attract a plethora of random viewers along the way.

Increased traffic is good for overall search rankings but that traffic does not necessarily translate into conversions and sales. Many visitors won’t be your ideal consumers and, consequently, won’t be making any transactions on your site. However, you're banking on a return for your SEO efforts, and there is a lot you can learn from driving organic traffic.

Winning ROI on SEO, however, is a strategic pursuit that requires discipline and understanding of data -- both conversionary and non-conversionary -- in order to attain desirable, lucrative results. Below is advice for gaining marketing ROI on your SEO campaign.

Understand Why You Are Investing In SEO

Opting to hire an SEO agency can't be as simple as knowing that the online strategy worked for a friend or a competitor. Pinpoint your company’s reasons and specific conversion goals which will become major key performance indicators for your business. Your goals will never be the same as someone else’s, so why should your strategy be the same?

Let’s say you want to take your business to a new level. If you already have a reliable stream of transaction traffic (in-store, online, via social), SEO makes for a robust driver of new traffic with control systems in place. Optimizing your site to rise in search rankings will invite even more people to your online store to make purchases.

Alternatively, you might want to grow current organic search traffic for the sake of brand expansion. If you already harness organic search traffic from your ideal consumers, SEO can help bring in more of this targeted audience (niche-hunting, based on long-tail keywords). Organic search traffic is the healthiest traffic for your site, so using advanced SEO tactics to boost already-proven organic traffic numbers is a key strategy.

You should strive to have a better understanding of how SEO strategies work and how the outcomes of different tactics and the subsequent data and measurements can affect your overall key performance indicators and business goals. Also, you will be able to test the knowledge of SEO agencies who are asking for your business by understanding what metrics they rely on in order to help you achieve your goals.

Maintain A Website That Will Have The Capacity For High Search Volumes And Traffic

Before you invest in SEO, make sure that your website is ready to provide a conversionary value to the end audience all the while providing a smooth user experience. One of the biggest mistakes companies make is investing in SEO before their website is optimized for visitors and sales. If SEO boosts a site to the top of Google or another search engine and that site is poorly equipped to handle the traffic, consumers will not only leave the site without purchasing, but the rankings will be negatively impacted thereafter. Be sure to have these website elements functioning and performing optimally:

• Create a fluid, attractive user experience. Solid SEO agencies work to optimize your user experience before bringing on massive traffic gains in order to maximize the conversionary ROI. Google uses many factors in its search ranking algorithm -- at the top of the list is how easy and enjoyable it is for a human to navigate your site.

• Optimize for conversions. Conversions refer to sales, email and newsletter subscriptions and social shares or even click-to-calls or sign-ups of any kind. Any sort of transaction (financial or information) is a conversion.

• Make it easy to complete a purchase. In the e-commerce space, the whole point of high traffic is sales of some sort, so make sure your online store is easy to navigate and overall provides a great experience to consumers. Your transactions will be based on numerous factors -- above and beyond just site optimization -- so before anything else, make it easy to buy.

• Set up your site to generate leads. Whether or not a sale is made at the time of a visit, leads can and should be generated for future nurture (also known as a lead funnel). Implement tactics such as email and newsletter opt-ins, discount opt-ins and future notifications and specials.

Investigate SEO Agencies Before Hiring One

When you are ready to onboard additional SEO help, be sure to get information on how ROI will be measured. Follow up by asking exactly what ROI plans will be obtained and what tactics will be used to do so. Asking for transparency in strategy, execution and tracking of all these factors should be at the top of your list.

You or the SEO agency you hire should be able to project numbers and analyze the hypothetical results before going any further. Monitoring changes -- algorithm, SEO, result and ROI change -- is critical.

Mastering SEO is emotionally taxing, as rules are always changing and the game is always spinning in a new direction. Prepare for the stress of consistently engaging with and reacting to the unknown. That’s the nature of SEO and algorithms.

Be certain that your investment is weighted lightly against your potential ROI and that it is a financial risk you can afford to take for the reward. But most importantly, when necessary, ensure that whoever you hire understands these basics as well as advanced tactics to maximize ROI.

Forbes Agency Council is an invitation-only, fee-based organization for executives in successful public relations, media strategy, creative and advertising agencies. Find out if you qualify at forbesagencycouncil.com/qualify. Questions about an article? Email feedback@fo...